Friday, October 31, 2008

As someone who gets his rocks off when countries literally shut down for World Cup soccer matches, or when Trinidad & Tobago declared a national holiday the day after simply qualifying for the 2006 World Cup, or that all of the schools in Louisville, KY are closed the day before the Kentucky Derby every year, I am beyond amused by this:

Tired of struggling to find enough teachers to staff its classrooms on the Friday before the annual Georgia-Florida football game, the Clarke County (Ga.) School District -- which includes Athens, home of the University of Georgia -- decided to cancel school altogether.

According to area media reports, 137 teachers last year called in sick the day before the big game, and the district was able to find only 113 substitutes. School administrators studied the absences over the years and found a pattern -- almost twice as many teachers call in sick the Friday before the annual game in Jacksonville, Fla., about 360 miles away, than on an average school day. So the district decided to call off school the Friday before the game. And Clarke County is not alone; the schools in nearby Madison and Oglethorpe counties also are taking the day off.

First reaction: HOLY SHIT that means that damn near 70 teachers in ACC call in sick on any given Friday throughout the school year? {insert joke about Georgia public education here}.

I remember when we were in college the one of the main factors for determining if any professor was to be placed in the COOL or TOOL category was whether they canceled class on the Friday before the Cocktail party or if they made a big stink about attendance that day being mandatory, as we made the road trip every year with thousands of other students and therefor weren't going to be there either way.

Georgia fans will love this bit of news. And Georgia Tech fans will too.

"Excuse me, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.Is anybody watching this?HELP!!! HELP!!! HELP!!!Are you kidding?What have I done?Get away from me manGet off of me!!!What did I do???!?What did I do???!?What did I do???!?What did I do???!?I'm just laying here on my back!Somebody help me!!!13 carries, -15 yards rushing. Sacked 5x all year going into game, sacked 6x by UGA.

Monday, October 27, 2008

The Olympic final never lived up to its epic potential, although that was down to the organizers rather than the teams. The Beijing organizers really wanted to have the final in "The Birdsnest", even though each & every one of the other matches of the tournament were played in other stadia. The only time they could squeeze it in between all of the track & field events was at noon local time, and the temperature on the field was pushing 114 degrees. This of course after every other match in the whole tournament was played at night in the relatively cooler temperatures. Dumbasses.

It was so unbelievably hot, that for the first time in history, FIFA took official timeouts halfway through each of the halves so that the players could rest & drink liquids. Crazy. As you can imagine, this took quite a bit away from the game. Add to that a temporary pitch which was laid just for this game in the infield track- and which was a bit dodgy- and the game was pretty damn disappointing.

If it was a fight you might be able to say that Nigeria just shaded it on points, especially in the first half. But it wasn't a fight, and Argentina scored a goal thanks to 1) a great through pass by Messi and 2) an absolutely inexplicable fuckup by the Nigerian goalkeeper where he came all the way out of his goal, stranded himself in no man's land, and allowed Di Maria to easily chip it over his head into the goal. It was a good finish, but never would have been possible without the keeper's moment of madness.

So that was that. It was especially foolish of the organizers to play the match in the noonday sun after the series of collapsing deaths in soccer in 2007; fortunately no one collapsed.

Argentina can basically now claim to be a youth soccer dynasty. In just the last 4 years they have won back to back Olympic {under 23} Gold Medals in 2004 & 2008, as well as back to back FIFA Under 20 World Cups in 2005 & 2007. At this point, with the incredible young talent they have, in addition to the ridiculous talent in their senior squad, they are in my mind the clear favorites to lift the 2010 World Cup.